Traffic was stopped and tragedy averted when a section of land, including a portion of state Route 516 in Dover Township, collapsed Wednesday.

But the inconvenience to the traveling public, some of whom depended on Route 516 for their livelihood, has just begun — and will continue for many months.

Doug Swihart, who resides on Winfield-Strasburg Road, said he has been told that Route 516 will be closed for up to 10 months.

That’s also the understanding of Jason Wallick, a Garaway High School teacher and football coach, who lives on Schneiders Crossing Road.

“It is likely it will be closed for several months,” said Lloyd MacAdam, deputy director of Ohio Department of Transportation District 11, headquartered in New Philadelphia.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like this,” MacAdam said Thursday, referring to the crater that developed under Route 516, causing the westbound driving lane to collapse.

MacAdam explained that the collapse occurred when Newton Asphalt Paving Inc. employees, who were dredging sand and gravel from the company’s pond near Bair Road, got too close to the edge of the pond.

Because the dredging was too close to the edge, the toe of the slope started collapsing into the water, and it continued collapsing around to the Route 516 side. In a few minutes, the collapse extended more than 100 feet, MacAdam said.

The area is primarily sand and gravel and yields a fine grade of sand, he added.

MacAdam said ODOT technical experts will be at the scene today, as they attempt to arrive at a solution of how to fix the roadway.

“It will take significant efforts to correct this,” he said, adding that the solution likely will involve major construction.

Swihart and Wallick both say they depended on Route 516 as their major route to Dover and New Philadelphia.

And Swihart, a grain farmer, intends to begin hauling corn to Agland in New Philadelphia on a daily basis in January.

With Route 516 closed, and the fact he hauls with tractor-trailer rigs, Swihart said his trucks will be forced to detour onto other state routes — as required by ODOT for heavy truck traffic. That means he will have to route his trucks through Dundee and Sugarcreek, and back to New Philadelphia on state Route 39 — adding a distance of up to 20 miles each way.

With the price of fuel, Swihart said it’s not only an inconvenience, it will have financial repercussions.

He also noted that Route 516 was the primary route from the Dover and New Philadelphia area for workers at Case Farms in Winesburg.

While Wallick doesn’t use Route 516 to travel to Sugarcreek, he said it was his primary route to Dover, where three of his four children go for daily practice as members of the Tuscarawas County YMCA swim team. Now, they’ll have to travel on Schneiders Crossing Road to the north end of Dover, then travel south on N. Wooster Avenue or Interstate 77 to get to the YMCA on Monroe Avenue.

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Wallick said his wife, Kelly, also had driven Route 516 on a daily basis to get to New Philadelphia. Now, she drives to the north end of Dover, then to New Philadelphia.

“Who it really affects is my mother-in-law, June Celce, who is our baby sitter,” Wallick said. She resides on Josephine Drive, on the south side of the Route 516 road closed signs, and will have to drive eight miles, instead of four, each way to reach the Wallick home, he added.

Wallick said it was fortunate Wednesday that there wasn’t a school bus, or any other vehicles on that portion of Route 516 when it fell. “It could have been disastrous,” he said.

MacAdam praised the Newton Asphalt employees who saw what was happening and stopped traffic before the road caved in. “That was very wise on their part ... when they realized what was going on, they did the right thing.”